scales
by Aiko Isari
Summary: your only duty is to win. - alder
1. 1

There's a decrepit punching bag on your ceiling. Your long hair, not ready to be the spikes of flame your father promised he would teach you how to make when you earned them, is in a dancing, flashing ponytail. It swishes as you punch and kick at the bag. It is dawn, and you are nine years old for a few more hours still. You adjust your gloves and punch, thinking of the pokemon you are promised.

You don't know what it is yet, but you know it will be strong. For a Floccesy child, White Forest gives nothing less.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_ ** So I marathon wrote this in a couple of days last week, only stopping to make sure the word count was right. It was a request fic (which I am about to close because life)

Challenges: F6. write a drabble collection consisting of drabbles of exactly 100 words.

Warnings will appear per chapter.


	2. 2

You always have the thirst, but before today it's only been a parched heaviness in your throat. Over the years it escalates, quenched by a blazing fire. It's accompanied by laughter every time, the giggles and eager dances around the tips of your hair. It's in the push of your fists, the blessing of your foot work.

Something pushes you onward. In order to gain strength, you've followed it. It doesn't occur to you to be wary; you're too young and in love with the ideal of your own army of Pokemon.

You just let it continue to guide you.


	3. 3

_Shameless My Hero Academia reference for the win. Alder's Japanese name is Adeku. I saw an opportunity._

* * *

Your father finds you. Your fists are swollen and it is slightly shameful. To your surprise, he says nothing of it. He only smiles and brushes your bangs from your face.

"Ready to go?"

You nod. Your heart dislodges itself from your ribcage and goes straight to your kidney and you try not to laugh at the nervous sensation. To do so is unbecoming.

"Your mother is waiting," he says, rough as the blade of the axe he's waiting to sharpen so he can see you off. "She's been looking forward to this, Deku."

You swallow. Mother has your name.


	4. 4

Your mother limps towards you. A wheelchair is useless on a dirt road, so she stands with too-heavy legs and smiles at you. You try not to cry, and think of strength instead. You think of someone else's blood on the tip of your Pokemon's tongue and think of victory.

Victory, like childbirth, is messy.

When you blink the blood-stars from your eyes, she is still smiling. She gestures with her swelling fingers to the spiraling white tress overhead.

"Survive," she says. You swallow your spit and move towards the forest.

Survive until you are ten, and you are free.


	5. 5

The forest is a screamer.

It screams in silence and makes your hair rattle and your body cringe, overflowing with the scents and smells of what progress is not. This is a place trapped in time, perhaps even by Celebi themselves. You have never seen it shrink or end, and the thought of it makes you want to vomit up your bread and water. But you swallow it, and push the energy into your palms and heels. A seedot waddles past your toes.

You feel your heart slow down a few steps, and you smile.

The trees aren't that noisy.


	6. 6

You stumble more than once into tree trunks, and a Gastly makes you scream. Still, the Ralts are kind and sense your fear. Their pink horns glowing remind you to be brave. Strength is not for the weak.

You grit your teeth and press on. You cannot see the sun, so you don't know how long its been.

 _Trust your body to tell you._

You try.

Your feet continue to bleed.

As you walk, you hear a giggle. It comes from the branches, from the sun. The sky is mocking you.

You, try hard to ignore it.

You almost succeed.


	7. 7

It calls itself victini.

It says it has chosen you. You scoff. You have heard that name, all full of sparkles and miracles. All full of easy wins and cheerful goals. You refuse him. Strength is not built from that.

It only laughs harder.

 _You don't have a choice. You never do._

You decide to ignore the giggling child-voice, and keep walking. It fades away, but its words dance like your mother did as a little girl in your head until you're out in the sun.

Then, you forget, in love with the larvesta who is crawling up your arm.


	8. 8

Badges, even in the future, are made with metal and gems. They are forged with care and determination. They are not one easily.

You lose your first gym battle, to someone with Grass types who knows just how to use them to snuff out fires. You lose to experience and time and adjustment to weakness. You think it is simply your lack of strength that caused that roserade to crush your larvesta and tangle your shelmet.

Pure power is enough to ruin weeds, isn't it?

You think so, and you try again.

You have to win; it's in your blood.


	9. 9

This compulsion follows you ever onward.

It thrums in this city. This little port city called Castelia. You head south, towards a little shanty boat. It is probably meant for you, you think. This place is only a city because it's big and wanting to go towards the sky.

You meet the Gym Leader on the little island, and victini again. The girl is a pretty girl and a pretty smile and the pokemon says that she's dead someday.

You want to tell them humans do that.

It laughs at you. You see a trend.

You marry her years later.


	10. 10

She beats you soundly twice. You beat her soundly only once.

Larvesta and shelmet are fast, fast, angry, wild. They don't match up to the ferocity of the heracross you found at the bottom of a forest path. They don't tank the kingdra, this dragon dancer of the sea. His rival is the deadliest one to run into on an early try no matter the generation, but the gauntlet is all the worse because the fight doesn't matter. The wins earn no badges.

The satisfaction has no outlet, no award. It is not enough. You need the water to survive.


	11. 11

In Nimbasa, you hear protesting women, calling for more rights, calling for their votes, next to men begging for the sweet drinks of alcohol without the berry tax. The poor and the wealthy don't argue every day, but once a day, they do. But they agree their rights are gone.

You write your mother. She scoffs and your emolga is sent back with a disdainful eye roll.

You disagree. Women fought in the war. Why is this any different? Trainers are soldiers too. You think of her, the woman who would be Iris' great-aunt when years passed.

She deserved everything.


	12. 12

You are growing taller. You have earned another badge on your thirteenth birthday. The journey takes longer than it will years later but you don't mind it then. You don't much now. The further you go, the more time you have to train. Your zebstrika is too fast for you, but your reuniclus wins as a matter of course.

In your journey, the trainers are tough. There are no hospitals close enough.

In your journey you've passed many bodies left behind. You don't chase them. You don't explore them. There's no strength in hunting down weak opponents.

You go on.


	13. 13

_warning for death of parents warning for death in last chapter_

* * *

Your zorua wails about its mother at night, no matter how much you soothe it, no matter how much your orphan deerling aims for his head. You scold her, but your doe is in mourning too, and grief has its own, special, stumbling blocks. You try your best with them, and your cousin's telegram remains crumpled in your pocket. You aren't very modern, and never will be.

Your father is ill, Adeku.

Adeku. They don't know your name. Your name is Alder.

You aren't inclined to believe them because of that.

He is dead by the time you get home..


	14. 14

The sickness has a tentative vaccine by the time you are twenty-three. You have seven badges and by now the gyms have changed. So have you. You still can't use an advanced phone. You still can't look at photo albums. Some of your pokemon have come and gone. Your fiancee left the gym of Opelucid two years after he beat her. She went into university before you could afford a ring, but she said yes to the darmantian-forged fang knives.

Your first time is special in its awkwardness, and the two of you laugh about it through tea and toast.


	15. 15

On your daughter's second birthday, you finally earn your eighth badge. Victini laughs over her head and lets her chase his wings. By now, your team is unstoppable. By now, your team is beautiful and living and vibrant. The disease has not touched you yet, though it has run through the forest that you once ran through. Your daughter will not be tested there. She will be raised on a farm and tested by her dragon mother.

Times have changed, and so must you. Your thirst had not quenched. Victini will not allow you to give up.

You are cursed.


	16. 16

You think of challenging the Elite Four. You think of going after rare monsters as your partners train, as your daughter grows older and the disease touches you. She goes blind. It is better than the shepherd. His children die.

Yet the flames leave you untouched. Your wife survives with the dragon's blood. It saves the eyes. He doesn't. Your Pokemon survive it instead, weathering the massacre as the scientists try and try.

You are safe. Safety doesn't last.

Your volcarona, eggs almost all chilled in death, falls silently into the water below one day. Her scales do not burn..


	17. 17

You are powerless.

Your magic, your victory, has no bearings here. They are thrown aside like a gust of wind. The sound of their pain, the ache of age and its effects heavier than your jacket or the hair bands. You wish throwing it away would save them.

Your friend coos at the candles, at your larger, rough hands, thinking of the time when they were small and petty. Like their dreams. You don't cry. It isn't because tears are weak anymore. You spent your last ones on your mother's ashes. You regret that quite a bit.

You regret everything.


	18. 18

You are not a champion.

Your daughter is a teenager now. They've raised the age of trainerhood in Unova because they want to be sure the vaccine is working. Your wife tells her to go, with her trained partners. She is at an advantage in all things, blind and raised with a blind partner and an aura child, with a Pokemon who sparked her eyes by reminding her of her fear of lightning. She goes out now, and hugs you good bye.

You have no reason not to accept, except you are not a champion. Champions are strong, unlike you.


	19. 19

_warning for troubled family situation and grief_

* * *

The vaccine comes, five years after your Inferna died, seven after your baby girl lost her eyes. It saves so many but the loss is undeniably heavy. Every body is burned. Unova is shattered for a long time. As are you. You are not proud of yourself then. There is nothing you can beat. Your fists are pulp, and your daughter cries in her sleep, begging for the noise to go away.

She has nightmares until she leaves home. Some are even because of you. She never says she hates you, but it would be so nice if she would.


	20. 20

_possible headcanon incoming, also murder_

* * *

You spend more time angry than sad.

Your wife tells you her older sister was murdered, her dragons stolen from her. You are angry. This cuts through the apathy, the exhaustion, the loss of your Inferna. Your wife's older sister, a sweet woman, who had given her daughter to the Blackthorn ways. Now that woman has no mother.

The League can do nothing. They have no one who can investigate. Her Pokemon were gone. Forensics would have a long way to go, if they went anywhere.

You call the League the next day. You will use your ways, not theirs.


	21. 21

The thirst finally goes.

Your new larvesta loves your shoulder and a lillipup helps a preschooler catch a munna for her mother. You smile. Snivy tells his new trainer where he should stand to not get hit. The child looks embarrassed and you laugh.

The thirst is finally going away..

Your daughter waves a Sinnoh badge case onto the video screen and smiles at a blonde girl at the edge of the screen. They are both flushed pink with exertion.

You feel pride and love, seeing that sparkle.

The last time you feel the thirst, someone has hurt your daughter.


	22. 22

_warning for alluded to non-con_

* * *

It takes noticing the pull to resist it.

Victini's last pull, last tugs to see victory, are flames at your shoulders. You find the bastard rather easily. Your daughter is stronger than you. She has told the police everything and she doesn't flinch at your big hug. You look at this other girl, and her gray eyes glow. The gabite at her side looks you over like you're beneath his master and you don't care.

You have to go make things right.

The only trouble is how to do it.

 _Kill_ , whispers the pull. _No_ , you say.

The mantra repeats.


	23. 23

You don't kill him.

The girl goes to fulfill her dreams. Your daughter kisses her as she helps her team build a farm from scratch. You want them to take yours, but she waves you off. They need to be able to visit their grandparents, she tells you.

You don't tell her you have been accepted to the league. She'll see it. Instead you place an egg by the fake fireplace, and hug her while she cries.

Your volcarona nuzzles your cheek. You are its parent, not its friend like you were for his mother. But that's fine.

You're free.


	24. 24

You look around often, but the legend laughter doesn't come.

You are just as empty as ever.

You let others fill you up instead. Your wife, who calls you from home to inform you her dear old haxorus has finally taken a mate of his own and the house is full of the squeaking cries of dratini. Your daughter, who is in Sinnoh now and courting the blonde girl who became a champion after all these years helps Benga walk towards the screen and you with a smug grin on his little kid features. You almost wish you were there.


	25. 25

Your heart does grow lighter.

Your wife sees you more and more. The two of you meet in random places, on the Ferris Wheel, at the nearby schools, under the city with the chirping ralts. She never questions you, not because she doesn't do that, but because she wanders as much as you do, so the hypocrisy wouldn't be lost on either of them.

Your stint as a Champion is somewhat working, she says. You laugh raucously.

It's mostly because you aren't there.

Even with the fight-thirst gone, you are still a threat to so much.

She knows this too..


	26. 26

You go back to White Forest, watch the tiny people in their huts and their Pokemon free at their steps. You smile, you laugh. The trees look less like ropes than before.

The children laugh, run over once-bloody and polluted soil. The clear air is heaven on your lungs after Castelia and Nimbasa and you almost dance into the trees. You call to the Pokemon who might not remember and tell them you are home at last.

They hide at first, cower before your booming voice and outstretched arms. Then, they flock. This forest welcomes you.

Next time, with everyone.


	27. 27

You meet them one day, two trainers. They are fighting preschoolers. One of them has eyes like your youth, troubled and furious and begging for any strength he can pry from the earth. The other laughs and dances with the preschool children as they fight. They look happy.

They look like the person you want to grow up into. You wonder if this is who Benga will be. You hope so.

The excitement, the new joy rises. You want to have fun. You want the grass in your hair and your friends to rest.

So you go, and you play..


End file.
